Productivus Maximus: Doing More with Less

By Ryan Skidmore

March 29, 2017

Fundamentals.

Previously on Carmine Blog: “Fleet Management is the art/science that allows rental car companies, an ancient industry by today’s standards, to stay afloat in the age of Uber and the Sharing Economy.” What can small businesses learn from the living fossil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil rental car companies? Firstly, there is no replacement for tightly managing assets. Having expertise and infrastructure to manage, in every essence of the word, moving vehicles allows rental car companies to play a new game in their same old way. Example, car rental companies offer delivery of an exact car model to an exact location. (rental car companies face challenges in age of ride sharing services) Knowing exact inventory makes this possible. Next, applying fundamentals to new arenas yield good results. In addition to delivering cars to locations, rental car companies have started renting exotic and luxury cars. Large, well-funded, and well organized rental car businesses easily clear the hurdles of this business. Between sourcing, maintaining, and selling cars or navigating the insurance on $300,000 cars, rental car companies successfully make a legitimate and profitable business were other smaller players cannot. Lastly, they significantly augment their business model with technology. To what degree old and new mix and replace one another is highly variable, but it amounts to an old dog taking much time and effort to learn a new tricks that keep him on top while keeping a few old tricks.

Here’s less, do more with it, said Business Climate.

How to does Fleet Management enable more to spring from less? 1. Tracking vehicles reveals, in detail, were low hanging fruit inefficiencies are. With more than a few drivers in the field that are not watched, some of them will be doing activities that are wasting money in the course of their normal duties, or are not efficient. 2. Optimizing vehicle utilization looks at what else vehicles could be used for to make the company money. Does your company need that many vehicles for that many drivers? Can the vehicles be utilized in other places? Answering these questions and acting on them ensures that assets are producing at max capacity. 3. Being able to respond to events in the field drastically reduces the time it takes to complete services. Vehicle suddenly become mobile response units that act fluidly throughout the day instead of fixed assets for the day. Enabling you to respond to changing events with existing assets instead of having extra assets on hand in case of changing events. 4. Tracking maintenance enables keeping vehicles functioning properly for their expected life instead of breaking down unannounced. Once a vehicle reaches the end of its useful life, it is sold and replace with a newer vehicle. 5. Tracking the cost of fuel, assets, and maintenance enables precise budgeting and creates sufficiently accurate data to find costs that can be reduced. Keeping vehicles till they “die” is a tempting strategy that proves to be hideously counterproductive. By tracking the cost of an asset over its life, a business owner can find the sweet spot between the resale value, the increasing cost maintenance of a higher mileage vehicle, decreased productivity of a higher mileage vehicle, and the cost of a new vehicle. 6. Risk management cuts what-ifs down to size. Performing at capacity hinges on weeding out unnecessary risks to only retain assets and practices that will keep your business running if a likely unfortunate incident should occur; instead of being prepared for every possible thing that could happen, or not being prepared at all. Truth be told “do more with less” is only a catchy phrase. More accurately it should be “do the most with what you have” The Carmine system is designed to deliver these and more benefits right out of the box. Simple tracking with a Telematics Fleet Management doesn’t do your business justice.

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